By the time she released her third film, I Can’t Sleep (aka J’as pas sommeil (1994)), Claire Denis had already begun to explore and inhabit her mature style, with all its accompanying thematic concerns, formal complexities and narrative ambiguities in tow. The difficulties that this style presents for the first-time viewer are certainly considerable, although not insurmountable. For those who are inclined, repeated viewings (as well as the abandoning of certain cinematic expectations surrounding narrative closure, character psychology and dramatic engagement) are certainly recommended, as they tend to reveal in her work an abundance of riches, a treasure trove of human emotion not so much hidden beneath the depths as they are embedded within the surface. The question to ask oneself while viewing a Denis film of this period is not, “What does it all mean, and how does it cohere?”, but rather, “What am I seeing and hearing now, and how does it make me feel?”
For I Can’t Sleep, the answer to this question is frequently: alienated bodies on the edges of society, bodies both brutal and beautiful, tender and frail and desperate, existing within a post-colonial situation beset by history, by sexual disconnect and strife; but also surrounded by the sweetest of melodies, at once musical and mechanical, vernacular, exotic and sad. As for feelings, the emotions the film evokes from moment to moment are highly subjective, to be sure, certainly more so than if Denis had been a more prosaic artist – not for her are the typical point-of-view shots intended to involve the audience in the “action,” for example, nor does she go in for any of that cinematic shorthand designed to artificially heighten tension. Denis insists that her audience puts in the work, pays attention, connects the narrative strands, notices, remembers. If done so assiduously, I Can’t Sleep has a way of opening up to the viewer in retrospect, through the medium of the memory, in reverse.
Pity the poor promotional department who had the unenviable task of advertising this film for the commercial market. To pick one example out of many, witness this quote from Georgia Brown of The Village Voice, placed prominently on the domestic VHS release of the film: “A rich and startling noir that manages to evoke Wenders and Jarmusch at the same time as Chabrol and Hitchcock.” One must assume that the mention of Wenders and Jarmusch had more to do with the fact that Denis once worked as assistant for both men than with any similarity in style or tone. The Chabrol comparison is puzzling in the extreme and the Hitchcock evocation is just bizarre. (I Can’t Sleep is also as far from a film noir as one can imagine). For what is ostensibly a genre film about a series of murders, I Can’t Sleep is perhaps one of the most anti-Hitchcockian movies in existence. To go into I Can’t Sleep expecting an exciting and dramatic serial killer flick is surely to court disappointment and estrangement.
Although to be fair, this expectation is entirely reasonable. The film is in large part based upon the real-life crimes of Thierry Paulin, known as the Monster of Montmartre, who, during the 1980s, robbed and murdered 21 elderly women in and around the 18th arrondissement of Paris. If one is aware of this historical reality before watching the film, then all dramatic tension is immediately rendered null – the “whodunit” aspect of the story is over as soon as Camille (Richard Courcet) is established as one of the main characters of the film. If we know the history going in, we will note at once the similarities between Camille and Thierry – both are homosexual Black men, ensconced within the drag queen culture of Paris, whose flamboyant spending habits and all-night partying routines have no visible means of monetary support. But even if one doesn’t know this bit of trivia, the dramatic tension is still entirely lacking. For one thing, it takes a while for Camille to even become established as an important character, let alone a main one. The narrative flow of the movie is such that at first it isn’t clear who he is, the camera simply observing from a distance as he and two other men engage in a brief scuffle beside a parked car. His languid motions and gentle, almost angelic demeanor are such that even his acts of violence are gentle, even sweet. And so, when Camille is revealed to be the “Granny Killer” that has been a frequent background concern of the plot, featuring in brief snippets of radio broadcasts and the like, the “revelation” is neither one of shock nor of inevitability, but rather simply another element of the loose tapestry that Denis has been crafting, neither more nor less important than any other emotional component of the whole.
So if I Can’t Sleep isn’t a horror film or a procedural about the capture of a serial killer, then what is it? On a purely narrative level, the film consists of three strands that are not so much interwoven as they are laid athwart one another at various angles of repose. In one we have Daïga (Katerina Golubeva), a Lithuanian national who has driven herself to Paris in a stolen car, intent on becoming an actress. Arriving at the doorstep of her great aunt Mina (Irina Grjebina), she is shuttled first to her aunt’s friend, Vassili (Tolsty), a kindly fellow countryman whose apartment has been opened up in hospitality to various Eastern bloc immigrants. Having no more room at the inn, so to speak, Daïga eventually lands a job and a space to crash at the hotel run by another of Mina’s friends, Ninon (Line Renaud). She spends most of her efforts trying to track down the whereabouts of a theater director, Abel (Patrick Grandperret), who had apparently promised her an acting gig in Paris after having had some sort of sexual entanglement with her back in Vilnius the previous season. Living in the same hotel are Camille and his lover, Raphaël (Vincent Dupont), whom she catches glimpses of from time to time. The third strand involves Camille’s brother, Théo (Denis mainstay, Alex Descas) and his conflict with Mona (Béatrice Dalle), the mother of his small child, over whether or not they should leave France for his homeland of Martinique.
Denis (along with fellow screenwriter Jean-Pol Fargeau) have constructed this film in such a way so that neither of these strands resonate with nor reinforce one another in any meaningful respect. And yet far from yielding a disjointed mess, it may in fact be this very disjunction that allows the film to cohere. By leaving aside the desire to find a deep literary compatibility between the three texts, the viewer is forced instead to attend to the level of the purely visual. Not in the formal sense of parallel editing or the like, or of other formal aspects such as lighting or color scheme; no, what Denis perhaps intends for us to pay attention to is far more surface level than even that. What we are meant, as an attentive audience of I Can’t Sleep, to attend to is gesture, facial expression, body posture and gait.
All of the main characters of this film are isolated in similar ways; are alienated to similar extents. All are hemmed in by nationalities, language, poverty, sexuality and guilt. Even Camille, the Monster of Montmartre, is hemmed in by his lack of fraternal connection with Théo, his fear of death (perhaps by AIDS – there are enigmatic hints within the film), or more precisely, by his fear of life. This invisible dissipation that unites the trio is evident in the eyes of these vastly talented actors, in their longings, their brief yet powerful acts of physical touch and connection, however violent or alienated, and in their three separated acts of dance sprinkled throughout the runtime – their separation is what connects.
What does it mean that the first sequence in the film, even before the title card, is that of the uproarious laughter of a duo of helicopter patrolmen, laughing uncontrollably at a joke we never hear while looking down over a mist-shrouded roadway from above? We never see these two again. Can the fact that the only decoration in their cockpit is of a nude Marylin Monroe pinup be significant in some way? What does it mean that the most supremely emotional performance in the film is given by a tertiary character, and that the title of the film is given in dialogue by a deep-in-background quaternary one, at best? What does the title signify? The fact that Denis withholds this information, and (as far as I can tell), forbids us from even making an educated guess at it, is perhaps entirely to her point.
I Can’t Sleep is a film that grows in the mind. On initial viewing, the film may seem disjointed, disconnected, haphazard. And in a way, it is. But with repeated, careful attention, Denis’ project becomes, if not exactly clear, then fuzzy-with-a-purpose. In embodying alienation in the very bodies of her players, in embedding disconnection in the very structure of her film, Claire Denis achieves a sort of unity that would be otherwise impossible to achieve. She would make several films that are greater artistic achievements than I Can’t Sleep, but I can think of none that are more interesting to return to, and, with pleasure, become lost in once more.
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